Voltaic Systems Converter Review

Typical price:

£100

We like:

The built-in battery; the drool-worthy design; the useful array of bundled adapters; the recycled fabric; that it's relatively cheap

We don't like:

Its incredibly limited carrying capacity; the lack of UK distributors

SmartPlanet judgement:

We like solar bags, and this is one of the cream of the crop. It's relatively cheap as far as solar backpacks go, and Voltaic's experience -- it started making them in 2004 -- shows in the small details. The bag's manufactured to a high standard down to the zips and stitching, the built-in battery means it can keep going at night and the supplied adapters for your gadgets are comprehensive. Green travellers looking for a weekend bag or local shoppers hunting for a groceries bag will do better with the larger and more expensive Backpack model from Voltaic, but otherwise we recommend the Converter wholeheartedly.

Score:

Contact:

Nice Car Company at http://www.voltaicsystems.com/
Telephone: +1 877 304 6861

Solar bags have been kicking around for three years now, but the reason your average high street's not jostling with photovoltaic cells generating clean green electricity is simple -- price. You'd have been lucky to get change from £150 for most solar bags so far. The Converter, by contrast, is just £100 -- not quite a bargain by anyone's standard, but cheaper nonetheless.

Along with the leaner price comes a leaner profile. This is the smallest in Voltaic Systems' range of solar backpacks, with just ten litres of capacity. That's perfect for a super-thin laptop -- say, a MacBook Air with a mercury-free screen -- and a few tiny gadgets. But a week of food shopping or a city break bag? Forget it, this is a lightweight (1.3kg), low-capacity backpack.

The main upgrade from Voltaic's earlier bags is invisible. Instead of virgin plastic, the fabric used for this backpack is fully recycled PET -- usually plastic bottles in a former life. That cuts down on the bag's embodied energy (carbon emitted to make it) and helps drive a market for recycled materials. It also helps the bag play catch-up with those from competitor Reware, which has been using recycled material for a while. The good news is that we couldn't tell the Converter's recycled fabric from the virgin fabric on another Voltaic Systems bag we had to hand.

Like all Voltaic's bags, this one is well made. The zips are robust, the design was enough to attract envious stares and internal compartments feel robust. One thing to bear in mind is that the bag starts conversations with strangers, from cyclists and lorry drivers to newsagent owners and solar engineers at railway stations. That's good or bad depending on how sociable you are (we liked it).

So how well do those three solar panels perform? Better than other solar bags we've tested. In summer you can expect to top-up the internal battery to full in one day, while in the British January 'sun' it took three days sitting by a window to get to half-full on the battery's useful LED charge indicator. The battery here is the bag's big strength over Reware's cheaper but less useful Juice bags. It means you can charge your mobile phone and other gizmos at night rather than just real-time, when the sun's shining.

You can charge most gadgets smaller than a laptop with this bag (if you want laptop charging, try Voltaic System's top-end £300 Generator bag). For your cash here, you get a decent selection of adapters for most major mobile phone brands, plus one for anything that charges via USB and another for any gadget you have the cigarette charger plug for. You can order rare adapters and camera battery chargers individually via Voltaic's site -- not ideal, but better than having to buy a pack with several unwanted ones.

One big unanswered question is the working conditions of the factory workers making the bag. We've given the Converter an average score of five for ethics because Voltaic Systems didn't complete our request for information on time. Voltaic is generally communicative, so we're presuming the folks at Voltaic are just swamped at the moment, and we hope to update this review soon.

Ethical question marks aside, we're rather smitten with this bag and were sad to post it back. It doesn't get much better than recycled material, good value and quality, plus free green electricity all in one nifty backpack.

Score breakdown:

 

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